


21 thoughts I had today

by jestbee



Series: Fic Every Day in June 2018 [11]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Internal Monologue, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 14:02:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15074714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jestbee/pseuds/jestbee
Summary: Dan doesn't have a voice in his head.It's just a malfunction, a lack of one thing or another in a complex series of firing synapses and chemicals, but it always sounds like words.





	21 thoughts I had today

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably too personal, but I'm exercising some demons

There isn't a voice in Dan's head. It's a sound that supplies thoughts that he feels don't really belong to him, but it isn't a voice. He doesn't like to think of it as a separate entity because that feels too unfair, like there is a passenger he carries around in his mind and on his back that he can't get rid of. It's just a malfunction, a lack of one thing or another in a complex series of firing synapses and chemicals, but it always sounds like words.

_1.Today is going to be a bad day._

It tells him in the morning when he wakes up but sometimes it's just a prickly uncertainty that makes it appear so he waits, testing it out like stretching a rubber band out and then in to see how far it will go before it snaps. 

But there is no elasticity to him today. He doesn't feel wrung out or stretched too far but he doesn't feel relaxed either. He's drifting, coasting in and out of the mundane, numb and far away and just….. blank.

_2.I've forgotten what I was saying._

A person on the other side of a long conference room table listening to him say something. There are four of them, Dan can still count, and they wear matching looks of confusion as his sentence spins out and away from him.

Luckily, Phil is there, a willing and eager participant in a conversation Dan is finding too difficult to follow through the fog and as Dan's hand waves vaguely Phil translates that into something coherent. Dan lets him, and drifts a little bit more.

_3.You're not pulling your weight._

This might be the moment Phil begins to notice. It's early evening, the dull grey of the fading light has washed out the colours of the living room so that everything is grayscale and flat and the whole world feels like it's dimmed along with it. Dan isn't himself, and Phil can definitely tell.

He's pitching something. Phil is sat on the sofa with his legs easily crossed, one ankle over knee, and Dan doesn't blame him for not noticing before now. Because Dan is good at making him not notice. 

Sometimes noticing makes it worse. It pushes up against where all the chemicals should be and makes him feel lacking, broken. Even though if asked, Phil would say he's far from it. 

_4\. This idea is stupid. Look,he hates it._

"I don't think that's a good idea," Phil says. 

He's said it a thousand times before, carefree and non-judgmental but at the moment all Dan can hear is an echo of his own thoughts repeated back to him through Phil's mouth. 

"Do you have to talk to me like that?"

_5.Your voice sounds so angry._

Phil's shoulders raise, a fraction of an inch, it's barely noticeable but Dan is on high alert. He flinches, shocked by the way Dan is adrift in the middle of their living room, being dragged under by the tide of his own self hatred with only his anger to cling to. 

"I'm not… talking to you like anything." 

"You are. I'm sick of it."

_6.You're sick of yourself more like._

"I don't… I mean, I didn't…" 

Dan hears the drag of his own groan on the way up. It's out of his mouth and his eyes are pricking, eyelashes twitching over and over. This isn't a suitable reaction but he can't seem to help it. 

All day he's been gliding stoically through. Just distanced from feeling anything at all and while he can't stand that, while he wants to rant and rail and push against the barrier separating him from the world, he prefers it to this. To the way his blood boils up and over, rages through his veins like it's waging a war. His neck is hot, spreading down between his shoulder blades ice-hot in a spike before chilling on his skin. 

"Shut up," Dan hears himself say. And maybe he's still behind glass, still banging up against it in an effort to make himself heard. 

This angry hateful thing has taken over and he doesn't know how to stop it. Him and the voice in his head have become one and all that's left is everything he doesn't want to say. 

"Dan…" 

_7.You're being unfair to him, you know._

Dan can't stop. He so desperately wants to, he wishes he could take everything back, but it's out there now, sat between them all looming and twisted. 

"Just fuck off," Dan says. "God, leave me alone."

"Dan, are you… I'm sorry I didn't know you were having a bad day. Look, just--" 

"No."

Phil has shifted in his seat, made as if to get up and come over to him. Dan knows if he lets him Phil will hold him close with a quiet voice and soothing words but that isn't what Dan wants. God, he wants to spare Phil that this time. He can't stand the platitudes, and even more so, the need for them.

Dan walks past him, brushing against his knee as he does, stumbling slightly and feeling foolish. 

He finds himself in the hallway, pausing in front of their bedroom door. It's just another barrier, something solid and firm and he can feel the sinking sensation that comes as he takes half a step towards hiding behind it. 

_8.You're fucking useless._

It would be easy, to fold himself into the padded protection of his blankets and let the world carry on without him. But he can't stand that today. He can't bear the thought of once again giving in to laying useless and pathetic in creased up blankets. Hot and prone, still and unmoving. 

He knows what it will be like to lie there looking at the blank spot on his wall or letting his eyes unfocus so that everything is blurred. Phil will bring him water and stroke his hair and… 

Fuck. 

He hates this. 

_9.Go._

His keys are on the table by the door and they jangle in his hand as he picks them up and it's only then he realises Phil has tiptoed down the stairs behind him. It's likely he didn't mean to sneak up on Dan, that he only meant to check he was okay, but at the moment it feels as though he's moving around him with kid gloves, condescending and over-protective. 

"Are you going out?" 

"Yes."

He doesn't ask to go with him. Dan wouldn't let him anyway, he never does, but it still pisses Dan off that he doesn't offer. 

_10.It pisses you off that he can't actually read your mind? Wow._

Dan doesn't pick up a coat. He doesn't take his phone. He doesn't do anything, just uses all the frenetic energy built up by the itch of restlessness thumbing through him to turn on the spot and march out of the door. 

He lets it bang behind him. Possibly it's a message to Phil that he's pissed off. More likely it's just that he has to put all of this anger somewhere and a door is as good a place as any. 

_11\. Now what?_

He doesn't know where to go. He's just as useless out here as he would be in the house. 

They need milk, he decides, and he can do one useful thing. If he has to be out here, if his own mind has driven him out into the cold of the street, he can at least do something productive. 

Sheer impetus takes him down the street. He's in an aisle in the shop staring at the rows of crisp white plastic bottles before he knows it and suddenly the whole endeavour feels childish. 

_12\. You stormed out and slammed a door. What are you, five?_

It's stupid, so fucking stupid. He's acting like he's a bratty teenager angry at his parents over nothing except this time it's _Phil_ on the receiving end of it. 

Logically, he knows that the malfunction in his brain is to blame, but he can't take steps far enough back to see that at the moment. All he can see is Phil's hurt expression and the way he'd moved on the couch as if to get closer to him. All he can think is how unfair it all is and that, despite that, he can't stop. 

If he goes back now it still won't stop. 

He takes the milk to the counter and hands over a jumble of coins from the bottom of his back pocket. 

"Sorry about the change," he says, for something to say. 

Even though the milk is £1.29. Change is completely valid. Preferred, probably. 

The cashier just smiles tightly, the same way she would to anyone else, and rings him up. 

Then he picks up the milk, swinging it from one hand, cold and covered in condensation already now that it isn't in the fridge, and exits the shop. 

_13\. You can't go back yet._

As immature and small as he feels being out here, it's done now. If he goes back he risks prolonging the argument past the point where it is already and that would be even worse. 

Instead he walks. For a few hours. Until his feet are tired, until the thud-thump of his heart has slowed to it's usual pace and there's a bit of space in his head. 

_14\. Have you calmed down yet?_

He imagines this is what Phil will say when he gets home but quickly corrects himself. 

Phil and the non-voice in his head are different. Even Dan and the non-voice in his head are different. If he lets himself be. 

It doesn't take him long to get home. 

_15\. You think he'll want you to come back after all of that?_

Yes. Phil will always want him back. 

Besides, this is all Dan's fault. Phil isn't to blame and dragging it out is just punishing Phil for something and he doesn't deserve that. 

The flat isn't cold or dark. The lights are on, the one in the hallway and the one in their bedroom. 

"I got milk," Dan says. 

He's standing in the doorway with the bottle in his hand as evidence. Or an apology. It's some kind of offering he feels like he needs to make but even as he says it he knows it's stupid.

"Thanks," Phil says. 

He's under the duvet. His glasses are perched on his nose, his legs pulled up with a book splayed over his kneecaps. And the bed isn't a dank hole of lethargy that Dan had imagined it as a few hours ago. 

It's cosy and warm and _theirs_.

_16\. Time to grovel._

Dan shakes that one away. He won't let himself feel any worse than he already does about how today has gone. Because, yes, he was wrong. He was so so wrong and he's sad that he keeps doing this over and over but beating himself up isn't going to make that any better. 

"I…" Dan starts. 

"Come to bed." 

"What?" 

"Just…" Phil pulls back the duvet on Dan's side and pats the sheet below it. "Come on." 

Dan shucks his trousers crawls in, his bare legs against the soft jersey. He can feel the heat of Phil less than a foot across the bed but it feels like too big of a distance to cross. 

_17\. He doesn't want you to anyway._

He closes his eyes tight and swallows against the thought that it might be irreparable. 

Phil rustles around, closing his book and placing it on the bedside table. He flicks off the lamp, throwing the room into darkness, and suddenly his arms are around Dan. Exactly as he'd known they would be. 

And he wants it, God he wants it. 

"Hey," Phil says, the flat of his palm on Dan's back, pushing him closer so that Dan can slip his cold nose against Phil's warm, warm throat. 

He's crying. Ugly, snot covered tears breaking like a dam down his face and it's the first time all day he's felt something that belongs to him. Not anger drawn up from somewhere vapid and unreal, but pure fat rivulets of tears, his own sadness spilling up and over. 

_18\. You love him. You love him. You love him._

"I'm sorry," Dan sobs, "I'm so so sorry Phil." 

"Shhh." 

Dan chokes. His breathing wet and bubbled at the back of his throat. 

"It's okay," Phil says into his hair.

"It's not." 

"I should have noticed before. You haven't been right all day. In the meeting this morning you weren't yourself. I should have known." 

Dan shakes his head and wants to tell Phil that it isn't his job to know, that he shouldn't _have_ to know. But it's a role Phil took on a while ago, along with all of the other details of loving Dan, and there's no talking him out of it.

_19\. I'm so grateful for him._

"You don't…" Dan says, "I'm sorry you have anything to notice." 

Phil just holds him tighter and props his cheek on to the crown of Dan's head. His feet tangle up in Dan's calves, slotting one between them and one on top. Dan is wrapped up in Phil's long limbs from head to toe and it feels like comfort, like love. 

Phil is here. He will always be here, even if Dan doesn't let him sometimes. 

"This was just a bad day," Phil says. 

_20\. This was just a bad day._

Maybe it's the first in a string of bad days, maybe it's an isolated incident. Dan never knows, there's no way to know. 

And he won't get it right either. There will always be times he blows up at Phil, but he'll always be sorry. Phil can't read his mind, and he won't always say the right thing and Dan often won't be able to tell him what the right thing is anyway. 

It's a work in progress, Dan is a work in progress. He'll get there. 

Phil is a great support, but he isn't responsible for fixing Dan. 

_21\. I'll do better next time._

"I'll do better next time," Dan says. 

And he will. He'll learn. And so will Phil. 

"So will I."


End file.
